As announced on Thursday night, the winner of this year’s Desmond Elliott Prize is… A Girl is a Half-formed Thing.

I’m very pleased with that result – and not only because Eimear McBride’s book was my favourite on the longlist. The continued success of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing – like that of The Luminaries before it – gives me hope that there’s a real place out there for fiction that challenges the norm and follows its own path. And that, in turn, makes me want to find and read more of such fiction, and tell people about what I’ve enjoyed. If there’s one thing I can do with this blog, I’d want that to be it.